Pacamax

As an interesting instance of the Lindisfarne diaspora, the Pacas are certainly not to be overlooked.

The band's firmly negotiable personnel structure also included - at various points in its tortuous evolution - the then current and future Lindisfarne members Rod Clements, Ray Laidlaw, Alan Hull, Ray Jackson, Billy Mitchell, Marty Craggs and Steve Cunningham, as well as fellow Tyneside stalwarts Charlie Harcourt, Jed Grimes and Brendan Healy. As Rod recalls it, Ray L, Billy & Jed were the mainstays.

I doubt that the Pacas, who were formed in 1982, ever took themselves that seriously. They were a covers only band, performing on an occasional basis.

One suspects that this was intended as a format in which several Lindisfarne members could get together and enjoy themselves, doing exactly what they did best, but within a context which made it clear to one and all that Fog on the Tyne was NOT going to be on the setlist.

Their main surviving and commercially available recording is in the form of the excellent and remarkable Pacamax Live at the Magnesia Bank. For a number of years, it was available on cassette only, but it is now available on CD from the Lindisfarne Shop. This album comprises a dozen interpretations of rock standards, and Rod is credited with slide guitar and vocals. The recording took place on the 6th of April 1990, at the Maggie Bank, North Shields.

A Pacamax treatment of Frank Ifield's hit song Swiss Maid, which surfaced on Buried Treasures Volume 1, apparently originates from the same session.